Along with the rapid development in the manufacturing technologies, such as factory automation, an object is positioned by a vision device, and a robot arm is guided to pick the object for automatic assembly to increase the production speed. The crux of the automatic movement efficiency of the robot arm lies in teaching the robot arm to automatically pick and place an object, which has become a prominent issue for the industries of robot arm.
The method for teaching the robot arm to automatically pick and place an object according to the prior art includes following steps: An object to pick is circled by a user, an image of the object is captured, the image of the object is determined using image processing, image characteristic of the object are analyzed, and the direction for picking the object is planned. Then, the image of the object is inputted via an operation interface of the robot arm, the robot arm is moved, the movement path for picking the object is taught to the robot arm, and image characteristic and direction of the object to pick are set.
Similarly, the method for teaching the robot arm to place an object according to the prior art includes following steps: A placing position for the object is circled by a user, an image of the placing position is captured, the image of the placing position is determined using image processing, image characteristic of the placing position are analyzed, and the direction for placing the object to the placing portion is planned. Then, the image of the placing portion is inputted via an operation interface of the robot arm, the robot arm is moved, the movement path for placing the object is taught to the robot arm, and image characteristic and direction of the placing portion are set.
Then, a robot arm is activated, the robot arm is controlled by a control device to automatically move towards the object according to a teaching movement path for picking the object, image characteristic of the object is positioned by a vision device, and the object having the said image characteristic is picked. Then, the robot arm is controlled by a control device to automatically move towards the placing position according to a teaching movement path for placing the object, and image characteristic of the placing position are positioned by a vision device. Lastly, the object is placed at the placing position having the said image characteristics.
According to the teaching method of robot arm of the prior art, the user needs to capture the images of the object and the placing position, and further perform image processing on the captured images, analyze the image characteristics, and set the direction for picking and placing the object. However, the teaching method of robot arm of the prior art requires many professional jobs that are beyond ordinary users' capacity and the complicated teaching operation further affects the operation efficiency of the robot arm. Therefore, the robot arm still has many problems to resolve when it comes to the teaching method for picking and placing an object.